


Our Fragile Co-commandership

by llyn



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dark, Death of sex worker, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Humor, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-16 18:28:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5836177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llyn/pseuds/llyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren and General Hux discuss the weather on Starkiller Base.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Our Fragile Co-commandership](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6050218) by [quicksilverys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilverys/pseuds/quicksilverys)
  * Translation into 中文 available: [我们脆弱的同僚之谊](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7713721) by [Entree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entree/pseuds/Entree), [llyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/llyn/pseuds/llyn)



“Too cold,” Ren says.

“Really?” Hux asks, eyebrow arching, “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“That it’s too cold? It’s snowing.”

“No,” Hux, like Ren, has his eyes fixed on the empty plateau spreading out before them, squinting against the brightness, “I wouldn’t have guessed you cared about the temperature. Or even felt it.”

“I feel it,” Ren says, huddling in his ragged robes, “And what I feel is a fucking _chill_.”

“Oh?” Hux’s lips twitch, “A bit chilly for you?”

Ren glowers at the general, until the wind catches his hood, blowing it back. Hux can’t help but laugh at him. He doesn't even try to fight it, drunk on the certainty that this is the place—this lonely white planet where they stand will soon be host to the might of the First Order.

“You have a strange sense of humor,” Ren says, spitting out a curling black tendril of hair. He yanks his hood back up with more force than necessary, as if to prove a point to the climate, “Don’t pretend you aren’t cold, too. You’re freezing.”

“I like it,” Hux says, just to disagree, “It’s bracing.”

“I want to go back to the shuttle,” Ren says, but he doesn’t move from Hux’s side except to turn his back to the wind, “Want my mask,” he mutters.

“I like it,” Hux says again, enjoying himself more with Ren suffering beside him. Schadenfreude, he supposes, “It’s harsh. It’s unforgiving. It’s the color of a storm trooper’s armor—”

Ren snorts, bouncing on his toes to keep warm.

“So they’ll be easily disguised,” Hux finishes, trying not to sound defensive, “It’s powerful and brutal and—”

“And you can hide how small you really are,” Ren says, smirking, “Under a big coat.”

Hux opens his mouth. Shuts it again. Sticks his hands in the pockets of his greatcoat and turns his face away. He’s surprised to find that he’s hurt. Surprised at Ren’s cruelty, snatching this truth from so deep inside him without provocation. Surprised at his own surprise—he shouldn’t forget so easily that Ren is a wraith, sent from Hell to punish Hux for (and Hux is guessing, here) the decadence of his youth.

Still, Hux scolds him, “That’s no way to preserve our fragile rela—” he stops himself. No, not relationship. Not partnership. Not friendship, either, though Ren rushed out into the cold without his mask when Hux said he was leaving the shuttle to conduct some reconnaissance of his own, “—our fragile co-commandership,” he finishes, frowning at himself. Pathetic.

Ren laughs, breath puffing like a dragon’s, “You are, though. Small.”

“As tall as you are,” Hux says, petulant.

“Almost,” Ren says, “But you've got fine bones." He savors the words, _fine_ _bones_ , like he'd like to pick the meat from them. Hux tries not to shiver, visibly, but Ren must know either way, "You're just a little bird, up in a tree, singing the same song every day." Ren sings this, arrhythmic, with an eerie, lilting voice.

Hux glares—he's not a fucking _bird_ —only to find Ren watching him through narrowed eyes, hood blown back, forgotten. His dark hair dances wild around his face, “Bet if I wrapped my hands around your waist my fingertips would touch.”

Hux rolls his eyes, looks away from Ren, looks back, regrets it.

“Bet I could pick you up and hold you,” Ren says, still staring, “Not let you down, even if you struggled.” Ren's eyes shine too dark in the whiteness. Hux worries vaguely that he's being hypnotized.

"What are you doing?” he asks, blinking away the snowflakes stuck in his eyelashes.

Ren shrugs, “Keeping warm,” but he doesn’t stop eating Hux up with his stare. 

“Stop it,” Hux snaps.

“Stop keeping warm?” Ren teases. Hux doesn’t take the bait. Ren doesn’t seem to notice, “Oh, you mean stop threatening the status quo. Our fragile…” Ren draws the phrase out, extending Hux’s misery, “Co-commandership. Why, General? Afraid you might feel something other than your precious, lifeless cold?”

Hux sighs, “Are you about to have one of your outbursts?"

Ren blinks back at him, slowly, with defiant indifference.

"Well?" Hux asks, "Should we rush you to the nearest control panel or would you settle for snapping my comlink in half?"

Ren bites his bottom lip like he's trying to stop himself from speaking. Heaven forbid.

"What?" Hux asks.

“Bet you'd like a cock up your ass,” he says.

“Don’t be vulgar,” Hux looks to the sky, an appeal for help. It doesn't come.

“Bet you'd moan for it like a whore,” Ren says, enjoying himself. Schadenfreude, Hux supposes. 

“Bet you'd just lie there,” Hux sneers, “Like a princess.”

“Prince,” Ren says.

“Of what? The asteroid field where Alderaan used to be?”

“Of the dark side,” Ren says, imperious, face turning red to match Hux’s, then, “And I wouldn’t just lie there,” lifting his chin.

“Doubtful,” Hux says. Then laughs.

“ _Sirs_.”

Ren and Hux both jump at the crackle of the comlink, which Hux pulls from his pocket.

“Hux here.”

“General, all teams reporting back.”

“On our way,” Hux says, tucking the comlink away. He sweeps his arm, extravagant, “Your highness,” he says, bowing his head. Which is why he's caught off guard when Ren pushes him into the snow.

It bites the nape of his neck, stings the back of his ears, but the shame hurts worse. Hux knows better than to play with Ren. It’s undignified. Below him in every way. His father would have another heart attack if he saw Hux now, pinned like easy prey beneath Ren.

“Get off me,” Hux says, putting up brief, doomed fight.

Ren weighs ten tons, and he waits until Hux gives up on his own before he says, "No,” then he dips his face closer, until they’re nose to nose, unsteady breaths clouding between them.

Hux reminds himself, as his eyes flit helplessly over lips, moles, eyes, cold-pinked cheeks, that Ren is an evil spirit—meant to distract and confuse him, to lead him astray. Ren is a hardship to overcome. A test of his mettle. Ren’s eyes are nearly closed, long lashes lowered. He opens his mouth and Hux tries, very hard, not to tip his chin up to bring their lips together. He'd like to be kissed, he thinks, by that mouth. And, at the same thinks, _no, no, no, fool_.

“Come to my quarters,” Ren whispers, not kissing, but nuzzling his cold nose against Hux’s, “Tonight. I’ll make you forget all the stupid rules you hide in. I’ll strip them off you, one by one.” 

"That's what I'm afraid of," Hux says, amazed to hear himself say it.

"Think about it," Ren says, "Imagine it."

But there's nothing more to think about—Hux has thought it through—and he refuses to imagine it: Ren might see. Instead, he pretends, letting the silence stretch out, Ren pulling away just enough to watch him, then says, "I think..." And swallows. Ren's already frowning, has read his mind, "I think," Hux says again, voice quiet to match the frozen world, “that I’d rather sleep in a tauntaun. I’m sure it would smell better than your awful breath.”

“You’re testing my good mood,” Ren sits back. A storm cloud descends between his brows, fast.

"Oh, is that what we're calling your mania, now?" Hux asks, trying to sit up himself.

Ren's reply is to stuff a handful of snow down the neck of Hux’s coat.

“You _fuck_ ,” Hux throws him off, scrambling to his feet and kicking Ren in the ribs where he lays on his back, laughing. Ren hardly reacts, and when Hux draws back to kick him again, Ren catches his foot, sweeping Hux to the ground. Before he can get his breath back, Ren traps his arms by kneeling on top of them, his full weight dropping on Hux’s chest. Pinned again.

“I should make you suck my dick, right here. It’s what you deserve.” 

“I’ll bite it,” Hux snarls, squirming uselessly.

“Not if you saw it,” Ren taunts, ominously gathering snow in a gloved hand, “You’d fall in l—”

“ _Sirs?_ ” The comlink crackles in Hux’s pocket, “ _The thermal scanner’s picked up a life form moving toward—_ ” Which is all Hux hears. It happens so fast it seems to go backwards: first the soft thud of the halves of the creature into the snow on either side of Hux's head, then the sight of it splitting in half above him, as if sawed open by the distance disc of the sun just visible through the lessening snowfall, then the arc of Ren’s saber, the buzz of its ignition, Ren’s impossible weight lifting off Hux’s chest, a roar.

But no: a roar, Ren standing, feet planted on either side of Hux’s hips, protective, Ren’s saber catching the creature mid-pounce, cleaving it in half, the weak sun barely shining high above, two lumps of matted fur and burnt flesh falling into the snow on either side of Hux’s head with hardly a sound.

Hux blinks. Ren powers his saber off. He releases a long, calming breath, through his nose. Hux tries to breathe, too. When Ren turns to face Hux, a black tendril of hair is caught in his mouth. He spits it out with a huff, shaking his head to resettle his curls. Hux thinks, hating himself, of the angels of Iego—how their beauty shifts to suit the one looking. Hux saw one, once, years ago. He wishes he hadn’t, now.

“Where were we?” Ren asks, dropping heavily back onto Hux’s chest, re-pinning him. Not _what_ _was_ _it_ —Ren doesn't care. And why would he? Hux can't picture a creature worse than the one who's caught him—one faster, crueler, with sharper claws. Ren sets about gathering a fresh handful of snow, “What was I saying? Remind me.”

“Love,” Hux says, voice far away, too weak. He tries to clear his throat, but it’s hard with Ren’s weight bearing down on his lungs, “You were,” he tries again, “saying I’d fall in love.”

“Yes,” Ren says, and shoves more snow down Hux’s coat, “That.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out this [amazing illustration](http://space-emos.tumblr.com/post/138346615971/i-couldnt-help-but-illustrate-my-favorite-line) by the absurdly talented [space-emos](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dreams_and_other_stuff/pseuds/The%20Dog%20and%20the%20Rabbit) of the final lines of chapter one. I did a fucking backflip when I saw it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the immensely talented [imochan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan) for keeping these dicks from slapping, unsatisfied, beneath the floorboards forever. 
> 
> This chapter is a late bday present for [reserve](http://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve). Happy birthday, reserve! I am but a rancor in the basement of your palace of sin.
> 
> Hux Sr.'s speech is adapted from Richard Dawkins' _River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life_.

The shuttle ride to the _Finalizer_ is short but Kylo enjoys himself, sharing what heat he has left with Hux. They’re pressed cold leg to cold leg, wet shoulder to wet shoulder on a bench beside Phasma, who is just as wet and just as cold and covered in some creature’s blood, but also smiling, white teeth flashing in the flickering light, happy. Observing this, Kylo glances to his other side. Hux isn’t smiling, but he’s not frowning, either. Hux catches Kylo looking. Looks away.

Their quarters are side by side, and that’s how they walk to get there, silently, once the shuttle docks. The stormtroopers’ natural impulse to scatter from Kylo’s path combines with their training to snap to attention at the sight of Hux to bring them into an awkward, twitching stage-freeze wherever they’re caught, whatever they’re doing, like startled jakrabs hoping to hide in plain sight.

It’s tempting to frighten them further, but Kylo’s on his best behavior. He likes the trajectory of Hux’s thoughts, which—apart from _cold_ and _misery_ —are lingering by Kylo’s ear, which is red from the snow but also _big_ , yes, Kylo knows, but also, Hux thinks, he could take off his glove and put his hand over that ear, warm him up. Better than a mask, his warm hand. Skin on skin. Also, Ren’s stupid long hair is wet, too, but there’s one sad, dripping strand in particular, _right there,_ and doesn’t it tickle? It’s driving Hux insane. And would it drive Ren insane if Hux took his glove off and reached out and—

Kylo has to stop, eyes threatening to drop closed with the low, lovely hum of Hux’s thoughts. He might as well be whispering all this into Kylo’s big, red, cold ear. He’d been a shy child, a gangly teen, and always odd. Then Snoke. No one’s ever wanted him like Hux wants him. Desperately. Hux would chew through his own arm to be rid of his attraction.

It’s intoxicating. Yes, Hux may tell himself he feels humiliated, but what Hux really feels is a desire to bury his face in Kylo’s robes and inhale. Kylo wouldn’t object. If the general asked nicely.

When they arrive at their doors, Kylo stops Hux with a hand on his sleeve, “Well?” he asks. He’s been asking this same question all day long, in the snow, but Hux hasn’t yet answered in any satisfactory way.

Hux looks at Kylo’s hand on his sleeve, then at Kylo’s face, expression blank, as if he doesn’t know what Kylo means. But he does.

“Last chance,” Kylo says.

“Last?” Hux smirks, “Really?” He steps away from Kylo’s grasp, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Ren.” He disappears inside his quarters with a pleased cry of “Millicent!” The door closes behind him.

Left alone in the hall, chewing his cheek, Kylo reminds himself not to break down Hux’s door unless it’s a real emergency.  

* * *

 

He sits up that night picking through the tangles in his hair with unhurried fingers. On the other side of the wall, he can sense Hux dreaming, curled up with his little cat. Hux hates sleep because it robs him of his valuable time. It’s funny, because Kylo can’t sleep, and all Kylo has is time. More than he knows what to do with. He lets it tumble from his hands. It rolls around a corner, out of sight. He loses track. He doesn’t care. He just lets it unspool.

But sleep is precious. Hux doesn’t understand what his life of strict schedules and Very Important Meetings would be like, without it. The grey ghost world of sleeplessness. That’s where Kylo lives, snapping “What?” to whispered words no one else hears, shadows dancing in the corners of his eyes. It’s why they all think he’s mad. One of the reasons.

Sleepless, Kylo likes to watch Hux dream. It’s soothing, like a favorite program, the characters familiar: Hux, his grim family, Millicent, Phasma, and Snoke. But when Kylo peeks into his dream, tonight, he pulls back as if slapped.

Was that? What was _that_?

It can’t be what Kylo thinks he saw. Because he thinks he saw—no. Hux wouldn’t dream—even in _dreams_ —of—They must be fighting. And Kylo just saw what he wanted to see. Then again. Fingers forgotten where they’re stuck in a tangle, Kylo looks again, unsure. Yes, they are fighting. In a way. But—

He watches. His face heats. His chest heats. The tips of his fingers feel, suddenly, hot. Kylo’s seen himself in Hux’s dreams before, setting things on fire that aren’t traditionally considered flammable, or else leaving a trail of strangled officers for Hux to follow, and once, memorably, floating outside the bridge’s tall windows, refusing to return to the ship while Hux stomped around inside.

But this?

Is—

Making him hard. He scrambles to get his dick in his hand, afraid Hux's dream might—as dreams do—slide sideways, melt down, and reform.

But no, it’s good. Kylo bites his lip, it’s good. It’s—

Hux’s pants trail from one booted foot, otherwise they’re both still dressed. The snow stings Hux’s bare legs, but everything stings—his lip where Ren’s bit him, his tongue from getting sucked too hard, his eyes from all of it, his cheek from the words dropping like bombs from Ren’s lips into his cold-stung ear. His clothes are too hot, he’s sweating beneath his jacket, greatcoat spread like a blanket beneath him. His dick stings, too, from a criminal lack of attention. Ren’s hands, too tight on his wrists, hold him back, won’t let him touch, and his ass stings, hot pain shooting up his spine, as Ren does his best to split him in two. Hux gasps for breath, trying to break just one hand free to use on himself, but when he succeeds, uses it first to push Ren’s face roughly from his ear and, in the rush of cool air that kisses his neck in Ren’s place, gets his hand around his too hard dick and strokes—tears leaking from his eyes in relief—once, twice—

Kylo comes with a gasp on his own hand, in his bed, closing his dizzy eyes as reality slams back into place. On the other side of the wall, Hux still dreams. Kylo grins, then frowns. Still dreaming? Not satisfied? It worries him. The truth is that Hux has done things Kylo doesn’t even know the name for, while Kylo hasn’t—

He hasn’t even—

But when he peeks back at Hux’s dream, bracing for the worst, he’s instead met with Hux’s scowling ginger family, gathered together for an unlikely picnic. Hux gravely accepts a melon from his frowning father to carry to the table, but he slips. The melon falls, spilling its guts over Hux’s shiny boots. Everyone’s mad at him. His lip trembles.

Kylo smiles. Hux is so transparent.

* * *

Kylo’s instinct, at first shift, is to tease him. Drop hints, all day, until Hux turns that frightful shade of red his face can reach when pushed far enough. Hux-red. Such a bright contrast to all the grey in this place. Kylo laughs in the hall, behind his mask. The nearby troopers spook and flee.

But when he skulks into the bridge to find Hux on the catwalk, outlined crisply by their white planet, there’s no flicker in his eyes except the usual low-burning contempt. Hux doesn’t remember. Kylo probes his mind, searching. Then probes deeper, deep enough to make Hux blink and frown at him. Not even the part where—? No. Nothing.

Kylo retreats to his favorite shadowed corner to sulk, while Hux throws him occasional, annoyed glances, half for the intrusion into his mind, half for marring the symmetry of his bridge. Kylo, robbed of the chance to gloat, takes his revenge by tapping his saber’s hilt in an odd rhythm against the metal wall where he slouches.

Not one minute passes before Hux walks right into his shadow and places a stilling hand on Kylo’s saber. He puts his face right in Kylo’s, nose nearly brushing metal, and Kylo thinks, not for the first time, that it was a mistake to ever let Hux see him without his helmet. Before, Hux had been afraid, though he’d hid it well. Now, Hux feels any number of things toward Kylo, but fear isn’t one of them.

“I realize,” Hux says, and Kylo has to shut his eyes for a moment, tell himself not to grab the general with the Force or otherwise, “that it must be difficult for you to find entertainment aboard the _Finalizer_ suitably facile, but I would appreciate it if you took your search elsewhere.”

Hux blinks his long eyelashes in Kylo’s face once, smug, and suddenly Kylo gets an idea.  He can’t hide the smile in his voice as he says, “As you wish, General,” and brushes past him on his way out.

Hux watches him go, eyes narrowed. He’s (correctly) suspicious of anything resembling pleasure in Kylo, but he’d never guess his co-commander’s intentions this time. After all, Hux doesn’t even know that Kylo watches his dreams, so there’s nothing he can do to stop Kylo from participating.  

* * *

Just as he would slide into his robe and pull up the hood, Kylo dresses himself in Hux’s dream that night. Snoke came to Kylo in this way, in a past life. Crept into his dreams, where they could speak privately of his future, of his grandfather’s past. He wonders, as he shifts his appearance to match the scenery dripping into place around him, if Grandfather ever found use for this technique.

Though, from what Supreme Leader has told him, Kylo is unmatched in his abilities to swim through the minds of others. It’s high praise, he’s not certain he deserves it, but also—it’s true. Kylo can dip his hand into another’s mind as easily as he would check the temperature of a bath. And if it happens to be too hot or too cold, Kylo can change it.

Hux sits at a desk in his old Academy classroom while his father lectures at the podium far below. He’s worried because he’s put on the wrong tie (yellow, with flowers), worried because he forgot his homework (two thousand words on the relationship between predator and prey), worried because Ren is sprawled in the desk beside him, running his long finger under the starched collar of Hux’s uniform.

It’s difficult to concentrate. Just after sunrise, weak beams of light reveal the drifting dust like floating flecks of gold, and there’s a sense that he and Ren have been recently up to no good together—thus the wrong tie, the missing homework, the flush raising on the back of his neck under Ren’s finger.

Outside the window spring flowers have tilted their faces toward the sun and beyond that, hanging low in the sky, a great ship is under construction, a star destroyer of unparalleled size. She will be Hux’s one day, his alone to command, but only if he gets his homework turned in on time.

Kylo runs his fingertips over the back of Hux’s close-shaved head. Hux’s eyes flutter—a weak spot. TIE fighters pass over, bees returning to the hive. The room shakes, plaster falls from the ceiling. Hux jolts back to attentiveness, leaning sideways, out of Kylo’s reach.

“As I stand here at this podium,” Hux Sr. says, “thousands of creatures are being eaten alive, others are running from death, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within, unaware of their doom. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind forces and genetic replication, some are going to get hurt, others are going to survive and prosper, and there is no rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.” With each word he speaks, he grows larger, until Hux and Kylo are craning their necks upwards to see him, until he’s the size of Snoke, then bigger, and Kylo feels he has to step in.

He grabs Hux by the collar of his jacket and drags him close again, holding him there—ignoring his choked protests—as he puts his lip to Hux’s ear, his hand slipping under the desk to rub Hux’s dick through his pants, “Let me suck you off.”

“No,” Hux whispers, twisting in his seat as Kylo sucks on his earlobe, unbuttons his pants, still held in place by his collar, “He’ll see us,” Hux says, though his father drones on at the front of the class, thankfully returned to normal size.

Kylo stops teasing Hux’s ear long enough to promise, “No, he won’t.”

TIE fighters again. Their roar drowns out the sound of Hux crying out, when Kylo bites too hard into the soft skin of his earlobe. Plaster falls, sending a new wave of sparkling dust into the air. Kylo unzips him, and then pulls away to look into Hux’s face, waiting impatiently.

“Fine,” Hux says, eyes cutting away, guilty. He casts a worried glance toward his father, and then back to Ren, who grins. Hux bites his lip. He likes this idea. In bed, Hux shifts in his sleep, moaning. As far as dreams go, it’s a good one.

* * *

Kylo wakes up, face stuck to his pillow with drool, thigh stuck to his sheets with come.

He showers in a daze. He bolts down two plates of food the guards fetch him from the mess, and water, cup after cup, letting it run down his chin. He feels light. He wants to go again, though he half expects Hux’s stormtroopers to break down his door at any moment, blasters drawn. Then again, no. Hux would have a hard time proving Kylo’s crime against him. Or even admitting it.

Reaching out, he finds Hux eating dinner with Phasma, drunk, happy, nervous that Kylo might swoop in like some great bat and wreck his mood, guilty about his dream last night, about enjoying its memory today.

He’d woken up with dried come sticking him to the sheets like some first year cadet. Ludicrous. Usually if Hux has a sex dream the partner is nebulous. But this was _Ren_ in all his horrid wonder, clear as the stars outside his window, lips stretched around his cock, swallowing. Hux shudders and drains his cup. Incredible.

He knows he can’t indulge, even if he’s stupid for Ren’s stupid mouth. No. He’ll end up cold and dead on the floor at Supreme Leader's feet, or more likely Ren’s.

Kylo pulls away from Hux’s thoughts, frowning. He’s right. Kylo has more important things to do than to spend his nights perched like a gargoyle on the edge of Hux’s mind. This path is more dangerous path than he realized. Kylo vows not to return to his dreams that night.  

Except, once again, sleep won’t come. The sleep he’s had only makes him feel bereft. And, now that he knows what he’s missing, Hux’s presence across the wall, usually calming, agitates him. 

Kylo closes his eyes.

* * *

There’s a smear of green, glittering paint across Hux’s cheek. His hair is pale pink, loose, down to his chin. The confetti falling from the sky sticks to his skin. He shouts something—unheard over the noise—and flings his arms around Kylo. Kylo wants to know where they are, but he’s too busy fighting off Hux’s tongue with his own.

They kiss in the street, slowly, holding each other close. It’s at odds with the riot of celebration around them. He pulls away, resting his forehead against Hux’s for a moment, to breathe. Children chase each other between the mossy feet of an enormous statue, throwing firecrackers. Chattering friends pass fizzyglug between them, drinking straight from the bottle. Beribboned girls in bright dresses dance with their suitors, their mothers, each other, laughing. Kylo can hear the drums and horns of a parade in the distance. The sun is high in the sky, catching the paint on Hux’s cheek.

They share a look that sends a shiver through Kylo, that reaches him where he lays in bed, holding a pillow against his chest. He takes Hux’s hand, leading him out of the street, through a thick crowd of humans, of droids, of countless life forms, all giddy, and—is this a—three x-wings fly over, low, dousing the crowd in more confetti. Kylo stops dead. He knows what this is.

Hux keeps swimming forward through the crowd. He turns and laughs at Kylo when he sees him frozen there, grabbing his hand to take the lead instead. Kylo stumbles forward. This can’t be something Hux would dream of—but Kylo’s been to enough of these, stood on enough daises on enough planets to recognize all the trappings of this particular holiday.

Hux would kill him, surely, if he knew Kylo could see this. Supreme Leader would—Kylo’s heart drops. Does _he_ know about this place in Hux’s mind? People pat Hux on the back, hug and greet him, ask him who his boyfriend is, winking. Hux plays coy, tossing his hair, while Kylo cowers, nonsensically worried he’ll be recognized, trying to reason that Hux has simply watched enough records—a history lover, like himself, it’s part of the attraction—it doesn’t reflect on Hux’s loyalty.  

When Kylo spots a bombed-out house, windows broken, roof collapsing, he drags Hux toward it, bowling over revelers in his haste to escape the dense crowd.

“What’s wrong?” Hux laughs, “Don’t you want to see the parade?”

“I’ve seen enough parades,” Kylo answers, as they pass into the cool, dark shelter of the house. Inside there are a few stray couples, like themselves, making love on the broken glass. They search for an empty room, still holding hands. Finally, Hux draws him up the rotting stairs, to the center of a crooked room overtaken by iridescent, swollen vines the width of Kylo’s arm.

“Is this good?” Hux asks. It’s treason, Kylo thinks. Hux tilts his chin up when Kylo draws a finger through the smear of paint on his cheek, “I’m happy you’re here,” he says, “I didn’t expect you.” He leans in to kiss, but Kylo holds him back with hands on his face, running his thumb over the pout this inspires.

“Fuck,” Kylo says, to stop himself from calling Hux beautiful.

Hux smiles and ducks his head to hide his smile, looks back up again, “Yes,” he says, and takes Kylo’s hands in his, sliding them down his own neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, over his narrow hips to his ass. “Yes,” Hux says again, draping his arms over Kylo’s shoulders. He gathers up Kylo’s hair into a ponytail, a handle he uses to hold him still, then mouths against his lips, “Fuck me.”

“I—I’ve never,” Kylo stutters, and Hux throws back his head and laughs. Kylo tries to push him away, furious, but Hux won’t let him.

“No—” he says, grasping his arm, then, “Ren, wait—” getting a hand to his jaw, forcing Kylo to look into his eyes, “It’s just—” Hux says, brushing the hair from Kylo’s face, “I should have known,” he says, voice gentle, luring Kylo closer. Then he smirks, “That you’d be useless. All talk,” his hands slide greedy over Kylo’s chest as Kylo tries to push him away again, “Should have known I’d have to do everything,” he teases.

 _Not_ _real_ , Kylo reminds himself. Tries to remind himself. But Hux’s mocking has lit a fire in him, as always. Kylo wants to storm over to his quarters and wake him up with a dick in his pillow-creased face, but instead let’s this laughing, pink-haired Hux calm him. Hux pulls Kylo toward the window. He strips off his shirt and wrestles his pants and underwear off even as he grinds back against Kylo, as if they were dancing to the drums passing by in the street below. He leans forward, elbows on the vine-choked sill, to let Kylo see his ass. Wiggles it. Looks over his shoulder.

“Should I—” Kylo makes a stabbing motion with his fingers, illustrating.

Hux’s ass cheeks clench together. So no, not that.

“Kiss it,” Hux says.

“What?”

“Kiss it,” Hux says, “Lick it. Get me wet.”

Kylo does what Hux says, falling to his knees. He spreads Hux’s cheeks wide and licks a stripe from his drawn-tight balls to his asshole. Hux cries out. In his dream. In his room. Kylo’s face has never felt so hot, but he laps and laps until Hux collapses over the sill, one hand covering his own red face, the other dangling out the open window, limp. Kylo still doesn’t stop, until Hux is shaking, until even his voice is wet when he says, “Fuck me, Ren.”

Kylo rubs the head of his cock over Hux’s asshole, hoping this will work. But, like magnets, they’re drawn together. Kylo doesn’t have to try. The dream is pushing him inside of Hux, as Hux is pulling him inside, saying _Ren_ and _fuck_ like they’re interchangeable. When he’s all the way in, Hux starts to drag himself back and forth, fucking himself on Kylo as if Kylo really is useless. He won’t allow that. He grabs his slim hips and starts to fuck him, hard.

“Liar,” Hux huffs, “You’ve—ah!—done this— _fuck_ , Ren—done this before.”

“Shut up,” Ren says, because if Hux says one more word, he’ll come.

Hux turns his face, wanting Kylo’s lips, but instead Kylo grabs a handful of his hair, pulling his head back as he fucks him harder. Hux’s mouth drops open, pink to match his hair, and there’s no more talking after that. Kylo crashes back in his own bed, into reality, as he spills come onto his hand but he’s desperate to dive back into the dream to lick this same come, the idea of this come, from Hux’s ass. He holds himself back for one breath, two breaths, three breaths, and falls asleep.

* * *

He lurches awake as if an alert has sounded, as if the  _Finalizer_ herself is crashing toward a hostile atmosphere, bolting not just upright in bed but to his feet, head whipping, and hand searching for his saber, until he realizes what’s wrong.

Hux is awake, too, and panicking. Next door, on his hands and knees, begging his cat to come out from under the bed with little whistles and songs that aren’t working. Thinking about Ren, how he hasn’t seen him in a week, how he wants to see him, how he doesn’t want to see him, how if he sees him he knows he’ll think about it, about last night, oh god, and the night before. Then Ren would know. If, fuck, if he doesn’t know already.

Clearly he’s lost his mind. He’s unfit to serve. He should step down immediately for the good of the First Order, whose strength he would never compromise to save his own pride. Survival of the fittest and all that. He will admit his mental faculties have been stretched too thin, the stress of command too much to bear, and hope for lenience, though he doesn’t expect it.

Already he’s two hours late for his customary rounds of the ship. Not that he has to show, but he always does. The crew will know. Supreme Leader will know. He’s grown weak. He’s obsessed. And, more than anything, worse than anything, he wants so badly to lay his eyes on Ren, to know if he’s lost it truly or if—

 _Or if what?_ Hux asks himself, viciously.

He curses. Calls for his cat. Collapses, hot cheek pressed to the cold floor, with his hand stretched under the bed.

Kylo knows he shouldn’t go to Hux right now. Knows it’s a bad idea. Knows it won’t help. The problem is, he’s already at Hux’s door. Has already requested entrance, standing in the hall with his eyes on his feet like a nervous kid picking up his date. He should have put a shirt on.

The door opens.

Kylo’s lowered gaze finds his polished boots, his uniform pants, his black undershirt, his jacket folded over one arm. His face shows nothing, sphinxlike. He doesn’t look at all on the brink of resignation and despair. Kylo tries not to let his disappointment show, offering Hux a lopsided smile instead.

“Ren,” Hux says. His eyes flick down to Ren’s upward curving lips, then narrow, suspicious.

“I—uh,” Kylo says, realizing that he needs an excuse, fast, “Do you have any blue milk?”

Hux’s eyebrow arches, “Blue milk?”

“Yes,” Kylo says, growing at once more comfortable and more defiant in the familiar face of Hux’s skepticism, “I ran out and I—“ Kylo clicks his tongue, “was embarrassed to ask the guards.” He glares at Hux, daring him to question it.

But Hux is too busy trying not to laugh, letting out a choked cough instead, “Yes, of course,” he says, gathering himself, “They’re quite—” Then it dawns on Hux that Kylo is half-dressed at his door with a flimsy excuse, shoulders hitched up as if he expects to be punched, “intimidating,” he says, heart speeding. From under the bed, Millicent hisses.

They stare, Kylo in the hall, Hux in the doorway, a kind of standoff. Except Kylo is thinking of the way Hux teased him. “Useless,” he’d said. And thinking of Hux’s hair, tinted and long and the tips teasing Hux's lips. And Hux is thinking that he couldn’t have been so far off, in his dreams, of the size of Ren’s dick, but he’d like to see it, just to be sure.

“Do you?” Ren asks, then—realizing what he’s done, tries to cover it by blurting, “Have—” then, turning red, “Any—” Hux’s eyebrows draw together, baffled. Kylo will never live this down, “Blue milk,” he finishes, and tries not to wince.

“Yes,” Hux says, slowly, after a long moment’s consideration of Kylo’s psychosis, “Would you—it’s—” Hux makes half a gesture inside, “Do you want to come in?”

Kylo follows him in. He doesn’t look at his ass. He’s here to calm Hux down, keep him from resigning over a sex dream, just because Hux bent over for him just so, like he is now, to fetch blue milk, ass cheeks spread, Kylo’s tongue wide and wet, biting his white thigh to make Hux jump.

“Actually—”

Kylo jumps, knocking into a shelf. This sends Hux’s comlink crashing to the ground, where it breaks into three pieces.

Hux sighs.

“I can—” Kylo says, drawing the pieces up into his hand.

“Don’t bother. I want a new one anyway.”

“I could—”

“Could you get my cat out from under the bed?” Hux asks, the words tumbling over each other in his rush to force them out. He seems to forget the milk in his hand is for Kylo, and takes a great swig of it, forgotten stress descending down on his shoulders like a cloak, as he leans back against the counter, “She won’t—We used to—” Hux stops himself short of saying _cuddle_ , though it is what they used to do, at night, before Hux began to toss and turn and moan and come and say _Ren_ , “I’m worried about her,” Hux says, looking pained to admit this, however true.   

Kylo nods. He should protest. He should be offended. He should walk out, nose in the air. Instead he reaches out his hand to draw the cat out from under the bed, along with a black shirt she’s sunk her claws into. Hux scoops her up, detaching the shirt with care. She curls tightly around his neck like a high fur collar and glares at Kylo, hostile.

Hux starts to say thanks, but Millicent switches her tail into his face. He holds up an arm to block her, says, “Your milk—”

Kylo’s gaze catches on Hux’s bare wrist, where the fabric of his shirt’s slid down. He swallows, “No, I should—”

“You’re—”

“Go,” Kylo takes a step back, toward the door.

“Oh,” Hux says.

Millicent hisses again, then tucks her wet nose against Hux’s neck.

 _Stay_ , Hux thinks, “Ren,” he says.

Kylo stops.

“I haven’t seen you in—“

“I haven’t left my room,” Kylo says, quickly, to keep Hux from counting back the days and arriving at the truth, “I’ve been meditating. I’ve—” he finds a seam in the iron wall to run his finger over, unwilling to meet Hux’s eyes, “Found myself distracted lately. Unfocused. I shouldn’t—”

“Right, no. I mean, me too,” Hux says. They get into another bout of staring. Kylo runs a hand through his hair, nervous. Hux watches him do it, “You look different,” he says.

“Perhaps your perception has changed,” Kylo says.

Hux rolls his eyes, “I’m trying to compliment you, Ren.”

Kylo stands up straighter. Nods, “Okay.”

This makes Hux smirk, “You look less like a skeleton someone’s thoughtlessly reanimated.” 

“Thank you,” Ren says, after letting this compliment sink in.

Hux tilts his head, narrows his eyes, “What’s your secret?” he asks.

“Secret?” Kylo tenses. He wants to run, but even a shallow dip into Hux’s mind reveals the general isn’t suspicious of him, just curious. Interested. Amused by Ren’s fumbling. “Oh,” Kylo says, “you know,” he waves his hand. The lights flicker. The milk bubbles. The broken comlink pieces waltz, briefly, through the air. He might be overdoing it a bit, in his panic.

“Yes,” Hux says, “How could I forget,” he strokes Millicent’s head to calm her, as she’s sunk her claws painfully into his shoulder, “Sorcery,” he stage whispers to the cat. But he’s turned on, goosebumped, half-remembered dream scenes dancing suddenly before his eyes. His cheeks pink. Kylo has to leave right now, Hux thinks, meeting his eyes, or stay and fuck him like he did last night, in Hux’s dream.  

Kylo’s drunk with it instantly, using his hand against the wall to stay upright. He wants to pull Hux close, bite his neck until it bruises, push him backwards, onto the bed. He takes a step closer, ready to do all that.  

Millicent launches from Hux’s shoulder toward Kylo’s face, claws out. Kylo reaches for his saber, then thinks better of it and just steps aside, letting her hit the door, fall to the floor, and run, pride hurt, beneath the bed again. When he looks back at Hux, his gaze is fixed on Kylo’s hand where it rests on his saber.

Kylo’s other hand scrambles behind him for the door’s button. “I should—” he says, and flees.

* * *

Hux isn’t mad, exactly, but frightened of his own weakness, reminded of why he hasn’t leapt into bed with Ren yet. Kylo senses this, but still feels eager, that night, for more. Has ideas. He wants to see if he can’t take the dream from Hux, show him a fantasy of his own. He waits in bed, thinking of how he plans on draping Hux in finery, setting him on a throne like Snoke’s, bowing before him—or, no—let Kylo be on the throne and Hux on his lap. But that’s not—but it’s right, it makes more sense that way, Kylo on the throne, Hux on his lap. Or on his knees, even better—but that’s—it’s supposed to be Hux’s dream, even if it’s secretly Kylo’s, and, yes. Hux in furs and velvets and leathers and Kylo, Kylo in nothing, licking his boots like he licked Hux’s ass, long, wide swipes of his tongue, wait—

Hux should be in bed by now. He’s not. He isn’t in his room at all. He’s snuck off to medbay, talked his way into an adrenaline shot, is on deck three with a group of yawning engineers, discussing his weapon, wild-eyed, fidgeting, and victorious.

“Fuck,” Ren throws his pillow across the room. Summons it back. Fuck. If Hux won’t sleep, Kylo _can’t_ sleep. Unless—

He tries on the fantasy for himself, imagining his mouth full of Hux’s cock, naked on his knees, half-hidden by the folds of Hux’s heavy robes. Hux’s bright eyes looking down at him, idly stroking his hair. Hux would like that. Power over the powerful. And Kylo is powerful.

He could sense every peak and valley of Hux’s pleasure when he sucked him off in that strange, dusty classroom, could feel his toes curl against his sheets, the soft kiss of Hux’s eyelashes against his cheek as his eyes moved beneath closed lids, watching Ren’s lips drag slowly across the head of his cock in his dream.

Kylo could master easily the art of bringing Hux off in this way. More than that, he’d enjoyed it himself, wished he could feel Hux’s dick, warm on his tongue and wet from Kylo’s attention. Kylo could make it unbearable, could torture him, could drag it out for hours, until Hux really did lose his mind, so that, if there ever came a day with Hux on a throne and Kylo at his feet, they would both have no doubt who was in control.

Hux should be here for this, though. But he’s so ungrateful, trying to cheat sleep, deny Kylo what’s his, rejecting _this_ , this perfect world Kylo made for him. And why? Afraid of himself. So full of himself he’s afraid of only _himself_ , thinks only of _himself_ , not of Kylo, who he should be thinking of, even if only to fear him. Kylo could crush his throat. He doesn’t need Hux’s permission to take him, not in dreams _or_ reality. As Hux’s so fond of pointing out, Kylo has no control, so why isn’t he afraid? Why does he fear more what he will do, if he gives in, than what Kylo will do to him, if he doesn’t? Why doesn’t he want to meet Kylo in his dreams again?

Hux never returns to his quarters. Kylo waits. All day. Sits and waits, like a sarlaac, and will, like a sarlaac, take an eternity to consume Hux, when he finally comes stumbling back, as punishment for this. If Kylo can’t escape, neither will he.

When Hux does return, tripping out of his boots onto his bed, exhausted, Kylo springs. He has his tongue in Hux’s mouth before the dream itself can settle—so it doesn’t—and Kylo fucks him in a strange, sunset colored fog that makes their skin clammy where they twitch in their separate beds. Kylo’s desperate. But Hux is desperate, too.

Hux rolls them over so he can ride Kylo’s dick, look down on him from above, and when Kylo runs his hands up Hux’s stomach and thin chest to pinch his nipples and twist, Hux grabs his wrists and traps them on either side of Kylo’s head, grinding down harder.

“Bastard,” Hux says, between clenched teeth, “You’re _everywhere_.”  

Then, out of the fog, and arm, a head, a shadow, a person, who tries to pull Hux away. Hux pushes at their grasping hands, gets back to Kylo, looking into his eyes. The hands return, tugging on Hux’s arm.

Kylo’s furious, rolls them over to drape himself over Hux to keep him from this grasping thing. Kylo probes at it—thinking, wildly, _Millicent?_ —but that’s impossible.

No, Kylo realizes, it’s Hux. He’s fighting his own dream. He’s trying to wake himself up. Beneath him, Hux’s attention strays, his hands fall from where they’d held Kylo’s arms.

“Look at me,” Kylo snaps.

Hux seems more interested in the hands pulling at his shoulder, frowning, as he tries to swat them away.

“Look at me!” he shouts, again, and—maybe—pushes, just a little, to make Hux look.

Hux looks. Bites his lip, pleased. Tilts his head back so his eyes are dark slits, “Ren,” he says, back arching, fingers curling into place, again, around his bicep.

“That’s right,” Kylo says, proud of him. But when Kylo comes, biting Hux’s jaw to feel Hux feel his teeth sink in, his eyes sting. He feels like he’s on borrowed time.

* * *

Hux stands outside of Ren’s door, eyes lowered, and considers surrender. Has his finger on the button to request entry, when he remembers how Ren said he’d been meditating. He pulls his hand away as if scalded. He shouldn’t interrupt. Supreme Leader had been clear about the importance of fostering Ren’s powers.

And Ren had said, during that odd visit, that he wasn’t concentrating well. Maybe Ren’s resisting, too, maybe he’s plagued with the same dreams, too. And Hux will be damned if he gives in to temptation before Ren.

 _Last chance_ , Ren had said, and maybe it was, because Ren’s been absent ever since, not hovering in Hux’s shadow as he used to. If Ren can overcome this on his own, Hux can, too. Without shutting himself off from the world like some delicate ascetic. Hux collects himself and walks away, boot heels clicking down the hall. Kylo, on the other side of the door, turns back toward his room, chewing his cheek.  

* * *

That night, Kylo fucks him in the stars. Not as if they are on a ship, in a window, but as if they are stars themselves, two constellations intersected. Others come to try to stop them, faces familiar and new, begging, pulling at their arms, shouting warnings and curses. Kylo hates them, pushes them off, but more come to replace the ones he destroys. He tries to ignore them, buried inside Hux, teeth dragging against Hux’s shoulder, but they are strong, pushing against his chest, pulling his hair, clawing at his legs. Hux is putting up a fight against himself, thrashing in his bed. He wants to wake up. He wants, in his dream, to cling to Kylo, to stay in the black sky with him, forever.

Then Hux wakes, but only halfway. Mind alert, body frozen, he starts to panic in earnest, heart racing, caught between sleep and reality. Can’t move. Can’t see. He’s aware, horribly, of a presence, looming everywhere at once, within and without, staring unblinking into his mind, at his body, curled and helpless in the bed, a creature poised to consume him, taking its time, a faceless and pitiless shadow.

 _No,_ Kylo says, _It’s me._

He wishes he were there, in Hux’s room, to prove it with hands on Hux’s face, lips on his lips, but he can only pet Hux through the wall, head to toe, and Hux says, “Ren?” sitting straight up in bed.

Sleep-fogged, shaken, Hux blinks in the darkness as the last curl of Kylo’s touch trails away, raising the hair on the back of his neck. Then everything— _everything_ —falls into place.

 _Ren_ , Hux thinks, venomous, the blood draining from his face. It hits Kylo like a curse. Kylo flies from his mind back to his own bed, pulls the blankets over his head as if to hide from a nightmare.

At the first bang against his door, Kylo jolts. He shrinks smaller under his blanket. He hadn’t sensed Hux’s approach, but he’s out in the hall, kicking Kylo’s door with his unlaced boot.

“REN!” Hux shouts, not caring who sees him, hating Ren, hating Ren for lying, for letting Hux go mad, for letting him think those dreams were his, for nearly luring Hux into his bed and away from his command.  

Kylo snaps himself away from Hux’s mind again, shaking with Hux’s rage. He looks at his helmet, in a pleading sort of way, but no—he can’t hide his face from Hux now, he knows he owes him that, at least. He looks at his grandfather’s helmet, instead. Yes. Okay.

He goes to the door. Hux looks seconds from bursting into flame. Even crushed beneath him in the snow, defeated, Hux hadn’t looked so furious, so beautiful, so ready to squeeze Ren’s eyeballs right from their sockets. He’s thinking of trying it now, even if Ren kills him, Hux can at least take an eye, maybe two, as punishment for looking. But before he can move, Kylo draws his fingers through the air, and Hux falls into Kylo’s arms, unconscious.

A boot falls off Hux’s foot with a heavy thud as Kylo carries him to his bed, so he pulls off the other one when he lays him down. He draws the blanket up to his shoulders. It’s not the finery Kylo wanted to drape him in. Strange, Kylo thinks, how much he wants to kiss Hux right now, considering how badly Hux wanted to feel his eyes pop beneath his thumbs, but Kylo’s always been weak for Hux’s temper.

He doesn’t kiss Hux. He grabs a knapsack instead and quickly packs it. He has few possessions, a habit from another life. Hux has teased him, often, for his tattered robes. But wherever Hux moves he leaves the heavy footprint of the First Order, while Kylo can vanish in an instant, like a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [space-emos](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dreams_and_other_stuff/pseuds/The%20Dog%20and%20the%20Rabbit), official illustrator of Our Fragile Co-commandership, returns with another [triumph](http://space-emos.tumblr.com/post/140333798246/i-meant-to-do-this-sooner-but-our-fragile). I cried.
> 
> And then [she did it again](http://space-emos.tumblr.com/post/140335794476/just-in-case-i-havent-convinced-you-to-read-our)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a gift for the lovely and talented and brilliant [reserve](http://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve), who keeps teaching me things without expecting anything back.
> 
> Thank y'all for the inspiring, encouraging, hilarious comments, and for being so patient with my slow updates. To the artists who created art for this fic: you made me jump around like a kid--thank you thank you thank you. Thanks to [imochan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan) and [space-emos](http://space-emos.tumblr.com) for everything!
> 
> <3
> 
> **Please note:** The whore is of legal consenting age, no matter what Hux says.

After three weeks of peace, Supreme Leader tells Hux to go get Ren.

“Supreme Leader—” Hux bites his lip, cuts his eyes away, then asks, “Do I have to?”

He has to.

This mission is, of course, below him. He will not carry it out personally, for obvious reasons. It’s not the place of a general to extract strays from cantinas, which is where Ren is, in a cantina on Skao. Captain Phasma is more than capable and more than willing to lead the team—the prospect of hunting Ren down like an animal carries an allure for her with which Hux can sympathize fully. Preparations proceed on schedule.

Except, Hux can’t seem to get the thought out of his head that—just to consider the plain facts for a moment—Phasma’s never fought Ren before. Hux  _ has _ fought Ren, though, and, even if it was in the snow and wasn't necessarily for real, Ren was extremely quick, and Phasma may not know that about him, may not be prepared for it, if Ren decides to make things difficult. And Ren always decides to make things difficult.

Also Phasma tended—whenever she had the chance—to sprawl out in a cantina and drink the place dry making passing friendships with any number of undesirable creatures, and Ren is  _ in a cantina _ , and has been for three weeks, his coordinates pathetically stable, and everybody knows it, everyone on the ship is delighted by this information, giggling in pairs everywhere Hux looks.

And maybe Phasma agreed to carry out the mission more for the opportunity to meet unsavory characters while getting spectacularly drunk, and maybe Hux only imagined the predatory gleam in her eyes when he presented her with a case of specially made bantha-grade tranquilizer darts with hooks and spikes and needles and really anything that could fit and the modified blaster cannon necessary to launch such spiky, poisonous objects. Hux had designed the set himself, with Ren in mind, during a recent bout of sleeplessness.

But if Phasma only wants to go to Skao to get stinking drunk and end up kissing a Wookiee then Phasma is playing Hux for a fool, just like Ren played Hux for a fool, before running off like a coward, not that anything Ren does, has done, or will ever do matters to Hux in the least anymore. Not that it ever did matter. And it never will. Ren can do whatever the fuck he wants. Except that he cannot linger any longer in a cantina on Skao, because Supreme Leader has personally ordered Hux to retrieve him, and Hux has no choice but to go himself, as Phasma is clearly unqualified for this one. It’s unfortunate, but Hux sees no way around it.  

He strides into the shuttle shortly before launch to deliver the news, finding Phasma in the back, humming happily as she loads the dart blaster cannon. She doesn’t notice him until his shadow falls over her and jumps to her feet with an oversized dart cupped in her gloves tenderly as if it were an ewok cub.

“On second thought, Captain—” Hux says.

Her shoulders slump.  

* * *

Hux takes the shuttle to Skao, leg bouncing in agitation. He’s impatient to have Ren on board again. Their separation hasn’t been ideal. Strategically speaking, of course. The moment they land, Hux marches out of the shuttle and into a cloud of bloodgnats that, along with six stormtroopers, escorts him through the marsh. The cantina stands alone at the edge of a village hardly distinguishable from the landscape. Everything’s sodden, brown, and grey. The air is hot and busy with the hum of insects calling to each other from within the long, pale grass that clings to Hux's boots like grasping fingers. He circles his hand in the air, and the stormtroopers divide to secure the perimeter while Hux enters the cantina alone. The open door cuts a shallow slash of light into the smoke-filled room. Someone hisses.

The signal from the tracer on Ren’s belt leads him up the rotting stairs to a narrow hall. Flarewings swarm around the single, hanging lantern. He arrives at the door at the end prepared to kick it in, only to find that the door is so weakened from the last person who kicked it in, the patch job so obviously rushed, that he only has to push once and the door swings open. Hux looks to the left, where the signal suggests he’ll find Ren, but finds only Ren’s belt, draped over a hobbled chair.

“Hux is here,” Ren says in a lilt, voice crackling like he hasn’t been using it. Hux looks to the right to find Ren in the room's small bed. Even in the low light, it’s obvious he’s crying, “He’s here,” Ren says, and Hux thinks he’s cracked and started talking to himself until Ren clamps his big, bony fingers onto his companion’s shoulder to shake him.

The boy’s butter blond head lolls, creamy skin marked with red blotches as if a rathtar’s been at him. He’s a whore, Hux gathers, from the collar around his neck, or anyway,  _ was _ a whore. Hux takes it all in without so much as a twitch of his cheek. He stands--unmoving, unblinking--in the doorway, proud of himself. Pleased with Ren, too, in a stomach-turning sort of way, for living up to Hux’s expectations: he seems to have made a horrific mess for himself, left on his own.  

When the boy falls forward bonelessly at his attentions, Ren turns his wet gaze on Hux, “It’s all static, now,” he rasps, hair tangled, wide eyes swimming with what would be insanity in another, but in Ren’s case must be the next thing after insanity, “I didn’t know. I’d never—“

And more crying, until Hux, crinkling his nose at the room’s foul smell, says, “ _ Ren _ ,” and Ren, miraculously, shuts up.

Hux holds out his hand, “Come along, now. Back to the  _ Finalizer _ .”

“But,” Ren’s lip trembles. A white moth the size of one of Ren's hands chews audibly on the ancient paper shade over the room’s small window. Pinpricks of sunlight shine through, scattering across Ren like his moles in reverse. His moles, which, with the sheet low around his waist, Hux can see don’t stop at his face but keep going. One there and there and there, on his chest, his stomach, his arms, too many to count.  _ No _ , Hux reminds himself sternly,  _ no reason to count them _ .

“I have to fix him,” Ren says, reaching for the boy again, which in turn makes something roar inside of Hux.

He steps into the room, catching Ren around his arm just before Ren’s fingers would’ve touched the whore’s cheek, and says, “No.” He pulls, and Ren comes free of the bed, embarrassingly nude. Well—not embarrassing for Ren, but—

Hux shakes his head.  _ Control yourself _ , he thinks, and snaps, “Get dressed,” at Ren, who startles, and, sniffling, obeys. He occupies himself examining the whore while Ren dresses, taking Ren’s warm place in the bed to tilt his head here and there. He’s still alive, technically, though that’s not much comfort.  

“I lost control,” Ren says.

Hux snorts.

“I didn’t mean to,” Ren says.

“It’s just a whore,” Hux says, turning to watch Ren pull his robe on, “Nothing to cry over.”

“Not crying,” Ren says, showing Hux his back to hide his red-rimmed eyes.

“Fine,” Hux says, “Nothing to sob over. Can we go home now?”

The phrasing stops them both—Ren pausing with his belt in his hands to stare, Hux willing down a flush—but he refuses to edit himself. He glares at Ren instead, daring him to say one teasing word.

But Ren only pulls up his hood and nods, bottom lip sticking out as if it's been stung. Hux doesn’t waste a moment, grabbing—not Ren's hand—but the sleeve of his robe and tugging him out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the cantina into the cloud of bloodgnats waiting eagerly for Hux’s return.

“Torch it,” Hux tells the troopers standing guard, and, as he marches Ren across the marsh to the shuttle, a smell far more familiar than the thick, disturbing scent inside that drab room fills the air. Hux takes a deep breath of it, fills his lungs with it, as his father taught him. He feels better, after. A little more like himself.

Ren’s still sniffling by the time Hux pulls him inside the shuttle and pushes him down on a bench to await the troopers’ return, “Stay,” he says. Ren swipes at his tears, eyes focused on the floor. Hux watches him cry, arms crossed. He looks too pathetic to be believed, and its making Hux angrier with each passing second. How dare he mourn this whore when— _ no _ . Hux has no care for or connection to Ren. He is simply following orders.

He takes a seat beside him on the bench, with the goal of—if nothing else—getting Ren to stop crying before someone sees him. They are still co-commanders, after all. And co-commanders don’t cry. “There, there, Ren,” he says, “That’s the problem with whores—they’re flimsy as insects,” Hux says, smacking one that’s still sucking at his wrist, “One foot in the grave already, you know.”

“No,” Ren says, head still hanging, “That’s not—” he tries and fails to pull his tangled hair from his face, “He liked me.”

Hux lets out a disbelieving laugh.

“ _ No _ ,” Ren says, forceful, “I reminded him of someone from his past—”

“Past?” Hux says, “He looked all of sixteen. Must have packed it in.”

Ren whines, tilting his head back to rest against the wall, wet face glistening. Hux watches his Adam’s apple bob when he swallows.

“Alright,” Hux says, “Fine. You liked each other. It was a love connection. It was a whirlwind romance. Still,” he plucks a dark curl from Ren’s face where its stuck to his cheek, unable to stop himself, “If I mourned every lover I had to put down with this kind of abandon I’d never get my reports turned in.”

“It was an accident,” Ren says, fixing Hux with his half-crazed eyes, expression desperate, as if he needs Hux to understand, “I didn’t mean to, Hux.”

It’s the way Ren says  _ Hux _ , voice so soft, eyes so sad, that finally makes Hux understand Ren’s tears. “Oh,” he says, and the anger he’s held onto so tightly slips suddenly through his fingers, “Oh. Well. Say what you mean,” Hux wipes the last of Ren’s tears away with his thumb, “Or should I? Worried you’re some ghoul who can’t fuck anyone, whore or otherwise, without sucking the life out of them? Is that why you’re crying?”  

This brings fresh tears to Ren’s eyes. One falls. Hux wipes it away with enough force to make Ren wince. Hux keeps his hand there, cupping Ren’s face, so close to his own their foreheads nearly touch.

“You  _ are _ ,” Hux says, fiercely, “You’re a beast, Ren. Act like one.”

Ren nods, jaw tightening in the effort to pull himself together, “I’d never fucked anyone before,” he says, eyes down, black eyelashes all stuck together, “Not for real.”

Ren isn’t in Hux’s head at all, and Hux only realizes this now. It’s as if he’s keeping his hands clasped behind his back, a naughty boy whose been warned about touching the produce at the market. But after he says this, Ren looks into Hux’s eyes, as if he’s starving for whatever Hux will say next, for whatever his reaction will be to this clumsy reminder of his erotic adventures in Hux’s dreams. Hux bites his tongue, lets him go hungry.  

So, naturally, Ren tries to push him, “Aren’t you jealous?”

“Of that husk of a child burning alive? No,” Hux lets go of Ren and gets up to leave. He’d rather sit outside with the bloodgnats than have this conversation.

“I thought—“ Ren says, voice rising as if to stop Hux from walking out the door, “He looked like you.”

“How horrifying,” Hux says, thumbing open the door to the hatch.

“Where’re you going?”

“You seem back to your old self, which is my cue to leave,” Hux says, without turning to face him.

“Stay,” Ren says. The door slides shut, untouched.

“Ren,” Hux says.

“Please?” Ren asks.

Hux laughs, “Please? You’ve locked me in.”

“Come back,” Ren says, tugging at him insistently from where he sits, an invisible hand on his wrist, and Hux resists for only a moment, before drifting back to stand in front of him, frown in place.

“What? You haven’t been petted enough?”

Ren’s lips twitch, “No. Or called enough names.”

Hux sits beside him again with a huff, “I wish I knew what I did to deserve this.”

“This?”

“You. I wish I knew what horrid thing I did to deserve you.”

“Maybe you haven’t done it yet,” Ren says, working his fingers through his hair.

Hux rolls his eyes at Ren’s mysticism, and Ren grins back at him, gaze lingering. For a moment, everything feels like it used to, with just the two of them standing side-by-side on the edge of a great, tempting line.  

Ren says, “Scoot down,” and stretches his long legs out, muddy boots murking the bench as he rests his heavy head in Hux’s lap.

Hux allows it. Just this once. He brushes the hair from Ren’s hilarious ear and runs his finger over the rim, asking, after a while, “Why’d you choose this planet?”

“It had the most voices,” Ren says.

“And you didn’t realize,” Hux can’t help but smile, “That they were insects?”

“It didn’t seem important,” Ren says.

Hux  _ tsks _ at Ren under his breath, “It must be so very hard,” he says, “Being as stupid as you are powerful.”

Ren’s shoulders shake. A little laugh.

“Tell me all about it, then,” Hux says, “About the whore. Let’s get it out now before you’re loose in the ship with my equipment.”

“I don’t know,” Ren says, shifting his head to look up at Hux, “I was in his mind, feeling him feel me inside of him—”

“Seems masturbatory,” Hux says, realizing, as his heart pounds in his ear, that he shouldn’t have asked.  

“And then he just--he just splintered," Ren says, then catches sight of Hux's bloodless expression, "You asked,” he points out, always helpful.  

“For  _ your _ benefit,” Hux says, trying to cover. He’d seen them together already, how could hearing Ren describe it be any different? Because the whore was alive then? Had flirted with Ren and touched Ren? Been touched by him? Kissed him? Undressed him? Took him to bed?

Because, after all of that, Ren had still destroyed him completely and thoughtlessly and without warning? “Yes,” Hux swallows, “Yes, I asked. But I didn’t say I wouldn’t judge you. And you’re welcome for even asking,” Hux spits, gaining steam as he talks his way farther from the truth. Ren sits up again, staring at him with his eyebrows drawn together, “As if Supreme Leader is going to sit around listening to you cry over spilt—” the phrase escapes him. He swirls a hand in the air, “—whore’s blood.”

Ren makes a face.

Hux makes a face back.

“So you don’t care at all,” Ren says quietly.

“No, I don’t,” Hux says, but he does. And if Ren even glanced at his thoughts, he’d know, because it's all Hux can think of.

“But it could’ve been you,” Ren says, as if Hux doesn’t know this. As if he wasn’t aware, looking into the blond boy’s eyes, that he might as well have been staring into a mirror. It’s too much to bear.  

“It already  _ was _ me, Ren. You already snuck into my mind and fucked me, you absolute ass. You already tore me into little bits that I can’t fit back together. I’m as dead as that whore!” Hux shouts, suddenly on his feet.

It feels good to shout, so good Hux wonders of he'll be able to stop, until Ren shouts back, twice as loud, “Why’d you come for me then?”

“Because I was ordered to!”

“Then I’m not coming back!” Ren is across the room and through the hatch door before Hux can blink. _Again_ , _of_ _course,_ Hux thinks, hands curled into fists.

He hears the hiss of hydraulics as the shuttle hatch lowers, but doesn’t chase after him. Rather than beg, take two fistfuls of Ren’s black rags and say  _ please _ , Hux reroutes himself to the back room and plucks the dart blaster cannon from the rack where Phasma’s left it. He heaves it onto his shoulder, limping back across the shuttle and through the hatch door under its weight.

At the bottom of the hatch, he spots Ren storming across the marsh, takes aims, and fires, the recoil knocking him onto his ass, and Ren—too upset, Hux supposes, to sense the dart coming—is struck, stumbles, and falls with a great splash into the mud.

Something inside Hux breaks at the sight of Ren crumpled on the ground. He drops the cannon and—though Ren will later claim to have seen Hux run across the marsh, Hux will maintain that he walked calmly, somberly to Ren’s side, then—though Ren will say, smirking, that Hux threw himself on top of him, Hux will say he tripped on a root and fell. But either way, Hux gets there.

“You can’t leave me again, you idiot. I won’t let you,” he says and kisses every mole on Ren’s face, and even some moles that aren’t moles at all, but little flecks of mud.

“Who shot me?” Ren slurs, tongue heavy in his mouth as the bantha tranquilizer takes hold.

“I did,” Hux says, and when Ren tries to speak again, shuts him up by smashing their lips together, hands sunk into Ren’s mud-streaked hair. Above them the swarm of bloodgnats dance, and, in the distance, a black plume of smoke drifts west on a gentle breeze.

* * *

One week later, Hux says, “I’ve been meaning to thank you,” and Ren, who has been a silent, brooding presence beside him since they returned from Skao, turns from the viewport to stare, face hidden behind his mask.

“Dragging you through the halls of the  _ Finalizer _ with a tranquilizer dart stuck in your ass was a real career highlight. I should’ve called an assembly.”

Hux waits for Ren's reaction a bit breathlessly, and Ren makes him wait, standing there staring until Hux worries that Ren doesn't want to come back from what happened at all and so has no use for Hux's forgiveness.

But then Ren turns his inscrutable gaze back to the viewport, to the Starkiller beyond, and grumbles his first word since waking up from the dart, "Jerk."

Hux bites down on his smile.

* * *

 

One week later, Hux is watching in stunned silence as Ren adds a theoretically lethal amount of hot sauce to his mash when Ren starts up laughing without provocation. Hux’s eyebrows go up. The other officers in the commissary eye each other nervously and scoot away.

“What?” Hux asks.

“I’d never seen you run before. You know, on Skao, just before you threw yourself on top of me.”

“I didn’t run,” Hux says, pink, dunking his teabag in his mug again and again and with the same enthusiasm with which he’d torture a prisoner.  

“It’s very delicate,” Ren says, “Like a little trot.”  

“Ren—”

“Like a show pony.”

“You’d know all about show ponies,” Hux sneers, “And I didn’t throw myself on top of you either, I tripped.”

“You tripped.”

“There was a root,” Hux says, holding the teabag under now with his thumb.

“Did the root make you kiss me?” Ren asks, with a smirk.

“I was just excited to have shot you,” Hux says, with a wave of his hand, “I haven’t forgiven you yet.”

“For what?” Ren asks, and Hux shouldn’t be charmed by the fact that he seems genuinely baffled.

“For any of it,” he says. 

* * *

One week later, drunk in Hux's quarters, Ren snatches up Hux’s bare hand to look at it closer, turning it, tracing his fingers with his own. Hux looks at his own trim fingernails and the crisscross of blue veins beneath the skin of his wrist, the lines of his palm and the scarred knuckle of his middle finger, trying to see what fascinates Ren.

“There’s so much of you I haven’t seen.”

Hux snorts, “You’ve seen more of me than anyone.”

“It’s still not enough,” Ren says, bringing Hux's wrist up to his mouth. He trails his lips over Hux's palm and kisses each of his fingertips, but when Hux pulls his hand from Ren and presses forward to kiss him instead, Ren pulls back, the boy on Skao written all over his face, “I don’t think—”

Hux interrupts him, “No, Ren, you  _ don’t _ think. I do the thinking.”

“But what if I—”

“Kiss me,” Hux says, “I order you.”

“You can’t order me,” Ren says, “We’re equals.”

“Not after all this,” Hux says, leaning forward out from under Ren's arm to pour himself more wine, “I’m demoting you.”

“You can’t demote me, either.”

“I certainly can,” Hux says, “for refusing to follow orders.”

“Your orders to kiss you.”

“Right.”

“Well, it’ll be fun to watch you explain all this to Supreme Leader Snoke.”

But Hux ignores this, smiling over the rim of his glass, “Sorry, I forgot. You prefer me unconscious the next room over.”

Ren scowls.

“Or maybe,” Hux says, moving closer again, “I should kiss you. And you can just lie there. Like a princess.”

“Prince,” Ren says, but he doesn't pull away this time.

* * *

 

One week later, Hux asks, “Is it hard?”

“What?” Ren asks, hot breath against Hux’s ear.

“Holding yourself back from me?”

“Not holding back,” Ren says, biting down hard on his earlobe as if to prove it.

“You—” Ren keeps biting, stealing Hux’s breath as his teeth scrape his ear, “you know what—” his jaw, “ _ Ren _ —” his throat, “you know what I mean,” Hux huffs.

Ren pulls away abruptly, holding Hux’s chin tightly in his grip, “I’d do anything for you,” he says.

“I—” Hux says, goosebumped, then swallows, “Surely not  _ anything _ .”

“Anything,” Ren says.

“So you’d let me throw your grandfather’s helmet into the trash compactor?”

Ren doesn’t flinch, running his finger over Hux’s bottom lip, “Is that what you’d ask of me? If you could ask for any one thing?”

Hux smirks, “Oh, so it’s only one thing now?”

Ren shrugs and backs him against the bed, pulling Hux’s shirt over his head before pushing him down onto the sheets.

Hux lands on his back with a bounce. Ren is between his legs in an instant, running his hands greedily over Hux’s bare stomach, leaning down to kiss his ribs, his belly button, the line of light hair, sinking his teeth into Hux’s hipbone so that his back arches up from the mattress. Ren doesn’t stop, and Hux can barely keep his eyes open, one hand fisting helplessly in Ren’s hair, until he says, “Ren, wait, I--I know what I want.”

He’d only said it to stop Ren’s assault, but once he does, and Ren leans back, fingers still trailing over Hux’s stomach as if he can’t help but keep touching, Hux really does know exactly what he wants from Ren.

“Come back inside my mind,” Hux says, and when Ren frowns, “Please.”

“What if I hurt you?”  

“You won’t. You didn’t before.”

“That wasn’t—I wasn’t—” Ren shakes his head.

“Ren,” Hux says, “I miss you.”

When Ren doesn't answer, Hux huffs in disappointment.

"Next time," Ren promises.

"Right. I understand," Hux says, "You're scared."

"I'm being cautious. I'm not  _ scared _ ," Ren says.

"Yes, you are," Hux says, "But it's okay," his lips quirk, "it's okay to be scared."

Ren's eyes narrow, "I'm just scared you can't handle it."

"Of course I can handle it, don't be absurd."

"Are you sure?" Ren asks, smirking as he takes Hux's hand and brings it to run over his dick where he's hard and straining against his pants.

Hux's mouth opens on its own, "Of course," he says, snapping it shut, "I said I could, and I can." To prove exactly how much he can, Hux reaches behind his head for the bottle of slick on his bedside table. They're going to need a lot of it.

Ren hums, unzipping Hux's pants, and Hux lifts his hips, helping him. When he's done, he stands back and stares until Hux snaps, " _ Ren _ ," And, remembering himself, Ren strips in a rush at the end of the bed while Hux watches, impatiently, mouth watering.

He kneels between Hux's legs again, his fingertips raking down Hux's stomach. "You like it that much?" he asks.

"Yeah, I like it," Hux says absently, as he's busy running a slick hand over Ren's dick, thinking  _ mine, mine, mine _ . Then he flushes, their conversation catching up to him, "Wait, which?"

Ren's smirking when Hux tears his gaze away from his cock, "Me inside your head?" he asks, "Reading your thoughts?"

Hux doesn't let off stroking as he thinks of an answer, letting his fingers drift down to ghost over his balls before drawing up, up, up to the head of his cock and back down again. Ren seems to like it, saying "Hux," and "Hux," and " _ Hux _ ," before Hux realizes he needs to stop if he wants the night to keep going.

"Mm," Hux says, accidentally, when he looks into Ren's flushed face, "Yes. I want you back in my head. I'll probably regret it though," he says, languidly, "knowing you. Instantly."

"It's dangerous," Ren says, hooking one of Hux's legs over his shoulder as he pushes a slicked up finger into Hux's ass. "I--fuck,” Ren says, watching, and it takes a moment for him to remember what he was saying, “I don’t want to lose you."

"I know what you are, Ren. You don't scare me."

Ren smiles, the low light from the 'fresher catching his sharp canine, then leans down for a kiss. Their tongues slide against each other, slowly. For once, Ren doesn't bite.

"Add another," Hux breathes against Ren's lips.

"Okay," Ren says, "it's indulgent."

"I meant another finger, not another reason why we shouldn't."

Ren leans back with an  _ oh _ on his lips and does as he's told. Hux squirms, one hand wrapping around his forearm and holding tight. Ren watches him, devouring his expressions, mirroring each gasp, each bien lip on his own face, brows drawn together.

"More," Hux says, looking up at Ren through slitted eyes.

“You look just like you did,” Ren says.  

“What?” Hux asks.

“Nothing,” Ren’s free hand traces Hux’s jawline, “A dream.”

Hux hums. Ren’s fingers are close to the right spot but not there. If Ren were in his mind, they would be, “Do it,” Hux says between clenched teeth.

“You shouldn’t encourage me,” Ren says, breathless.

“I usually don’t.”

“It’s irresponsible,” Ren scolds him, mocking his accent.

Hux lets out a puff of laughter, “So is this,” he says, sinking his hands into Ren’s hair as Ren leans in close, lining himself up. Hux swallows, suddenly nervous. He tells himself to calm down. There's no reason for this moment to feel as big as it does. But before he can work himself into a real panic, Ren pushes in, and in, and in, and Hux’s back bows.

_ Shhh _ , Ren says, pulling out to slide back in,  _ shhh _ , except he doesn’t say it aloud, and Hux’s eyes shoot open to find Ren’s--drowzy and blown black and laughing.

“What does it feel like?” Hux asks, clinging to Ren’s shoulders as he pulls him up from the bed to sit, with a cry, in his lap.

Ren kisses Hux,  _ Home. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *incoherent sobbing* look what [space-emos](http://space-emos.tumblr.com/post/141787136351/meant-to-get-this-out-sooner-but-nightsofllyn-s) did. So beautiful. 
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://nightsofllyn.tumblr.com>tumblr</a>)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [To Dress in Your Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6144839) by [Kyloisadisneyprincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyloisadisneyprincess/pseuds/Kyloisadisneyprincess)
  * [An Unorthodox Method Of Sharing A Future](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6446686) by [humane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/humane/pseuds/humane)




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